Category Archives: evolution

Island-Hopping with an E.I.D.

Posted on 18 Apr, 2016 by Bryan McLean

If you live in the U.S. and feel like Zika virus is getting closer to home, that’s because it is. Although there are no known cases of Zika transmission by natural vectors in the lower 48, experts have stressed that … Continue reading →

Posted in evolution, genomics, medicine, phylogenetics, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

How to make the most out of your phylogenetic study

Posted on 14 Apr, 2016 by Christine Ewers-Saucedo

Phylogenetic studies are crucial for ecology and evolution. However, their usefulness for comparative biology or meta-analyses can vary considerably. Especially the inclusion of unidentified species (“Balanus sp.”) obstructs their use in comparative studies. How can I attach life history or morphological data … Continue reading →

Posted in data archiving, evolution, howto, phylogenetics, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

New branches on the tree of life

Posted on 12 Apr, 2016 by Kelle Freel

(Trees from Darwin (1837), Haeckel (1866), and Woese (1990)) We’ve come quite a long way since Darwin sketched out his tree in 1837 connecting, with branch tips representing animals and microbes currently in existence and branches and trunks their ancestors. … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, community ecology, evolution, genomics, metagenomics, microbiology, phylogenetics | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

What makes a range?

Posted on 1 Apr, 2016 by Stacy Krueger-Hadfield

Why do species have restricted geographic distributions? Classic ecological perspectives tell us distribution limits occur where ecological parameters coincide with the boundaries of ecological niches. Evolutionary perspectives, on the other hand, surmise distribution boundaries reflect a failure of niche evolution. Though small … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, evolution, plants, selection, theory | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The why's of sex

Posted on 25 Mar, 2016 by Arun Sethuraman

Sex isn’t quite what it seems – while superficially wasteful in an evolutionary sense (why inherit on only one half of your genes, when you can inherit all of them asexually, or why waste resources in mating when you don’t … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, evolution, genomics, mutation, natural history, next generation sequencing, population genetics, selection, theory, yeast | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The rise of the fruit flies – Can good science communication make or break a model system?

Posted on 21 Mar, 2016 by Christine Ewers-Saucedo

The answer is: probably not. It is probably more important that the organism thrives in a lab environment, reproduces and hybridizes with speed and ease, and has some additional “desirable” features: think visible mutations in the fruit fly Drosophila, constant cell … Continue reading →

Posted in evolution, phylogenetics, speciation | Leave a comment

RADseq vs. UCEs, round 3

Posted on 18 Mar, 2016 by Ethan Linck

Though reduced-representation genome sequencing (or high-throughput, or nextgen, or massively parallel sequencing, or…) has become standard practice for molecular ecology labs over the past few years, the relative merits of different library preparation methods remains an active area of research. … Continue reading →

Posted in bioinformatics, evolution, genomics, methods, next generation sequencing, phylogenetics | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

When times are good or bad, happy or sad, viral quasispecies like to stay together

Posted on 15 Mar, 2016 by Kelle Freel

We’ve known for a long time that symbioses are important across all walks of life. Clownfish and sea anemones are obligate symbionts, and bacteria found in legume root nodules help fix nitrogen. In a nice review published recently in Evolutionary … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, Coevolution, evolution | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Are genetic drift and inbreeding the same thing?

Posted on 14 Mar, 2016 by Patrícia Chrzanová Pečnerová

Does it ever happen to you that the more you try to understand something, the more difficult to understand it turns out to be? Recently, I’ve had such a problem with two of the very basic microevolutionary phenomena – genetic … Continue reading →

Posted in conservation, evolution, population genetics, quantitative genetics, theory, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Annotations on a tweet-storm directed more-or-less towards Neil deGrasse Tyson

Posted on 14 Mar, 2016 by Jeremy Yoder

So, Saturday afternoon, while I really should have been working on other things, this happened: Hi, @neiltyson, I am an actual evolutionary geneticist who probably did inherit such a gene, thanks. https://t.co/B9ATLu357L — Jeremy Yoder (@JBYoder) March 12, 2016 What … Continue reading →

Posted in evolution, natural history, population genetics, selection | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments